Marshall Lee's Closet
by CatzRuleMe
Summary: A genderbent version of "Marceline's Closet." When a game of Shadow Hunt entraps Fionna and Cake in Marshall Lee's home, it becomes an endless mission to sneak out completely undetected.


As Fionna and Cake wandered through the cave in pursuit of Marshall Lee's house, Fionna began to wonder if it would be the same as the time they formed a band to open the door and reach the Door Lady to retrieve their belongings. Although she knew that there was still some tension between Marshall and Gumball, she didn't understand why it was just the three of them this time.

"Cake?" Fionna asked as she rubbed the balloon in her arms. "Do you think it's okay that Marshall invited us to do this jam session without Gumball and Geemo?"

Cake adjusted the heavy dulcimer on her back with a grunt. "It's just a jam session, girl. Is that what you're gonna jam with?" She pointed to the balloon that Fionna was holding.

"Oh yeah," Fionna replied. "Balloon music is the future. Listen." Fionna rubbed the balloon a few times, attempting to make it sound like a series of notes.

"That's weird," Cake commented as they continued walking.

"Well, I just started," Fionna explained.

When they reached Marshall's house, they noticed a sign on the door.

"Look, girl, it's a note," Cake pointed out.

"What's it say?" Fionna wondered aloud.

Cake read off the note. "Hey, ladies. I had to run out, but I'll be back shortly. Blah, blah, blah…don't go in my house."

"Is that it?" Fionna asked.

"Yeah," Cake replied. "It just says 'Don't go in my house' in all caps. It's written in blood."

"Hmm…" Fionna sighed as she sat on the steps. Cake curled into a tight, furry ball at the base of the steps. Fionna glanced down at her curiously. "What are you doing?"

"Nothing like a catnap to pass the time," Cake answered.

Fionna groaned. "Well, I'm not tired so I can't do that. How about we play Shadow Hunt until Marshall comes back?"

"But I can't remember how to play Shadow Hunt," Cake protested.

"That's what makes it awesome," Fionna said. "That way, I know I'll win every time!"

"Not fair, girl!" Cake hissed. "Explain the rules, because I can't remember them."

"I count to ten, and you hide somewhere," Fionna explained. "Then, I'll try to find you. You can hide anywhere in this area, but Marshall's house is off-limits because he said so."

"Got it," Cake said.

"Great," Fionna said. "I'll start counting. Ready…go!"

Fionna began counting, and Cake's tail frizzed with panic. She scurried up onto Marshall's back porch and happened to notice a pet flap in the backdoor. Fionna had said that Marshall's house was off-limits, so she would never think to look in there. Because of this, Cake slipped in through the pet door and hid inside Marshall's kitchen, peering out the window.

"…3…2…1!" Fionna called. "Shadow Hunt…" She whirled around. "Gotcha!"

Cake was nowhere to be found, so she began searching. She wandered around the perimeter of the cave, checking behind the stalagmites. When she didn't see one speck of white fur, she tried under the house. But Cake wasn't underneath the foundation. She briefly checked under the dock, but had a pretty good idea that Cake wouldn't be under there since she hated water. But while she was back behind the house, she happened to notice a familiar speck of white in the window of all places. She climbed up onto the back porch and glanced in the window, and Cake was surely there. The cat morphed into Fionna's shape, but Fionna was furious.

"Cake!" she barked. "What are you doing in there? I said that was off-limits!" She noticed that Cake was trying to imitate her to look like her reflection, but she wasn't buying it. "Marshall's gonna kill you when he gets back! Cake, I know this isn't a mirror. You're not even doing it right! Get out of there!"

Sighing, Fionna gave up and slipped through the pet door just as Cake had. "Get out of here! He'll be home any minute! Didn't you read the note? Actually, you did! You read it to me! When he sees us here, he'll…"

The girls were interrupted by the sound of rustling. Fionna tackled Cake out of sight just as Marshall floated up the dock and jiggled the door handle. The twosome fled into the living room, then Cake stretched them up the stairs.

When Marshall entered his house, something didn't seem quite right. He sniffed the hair, sensing a change in the overall odor. "Smells like sauerkraut in here," he said to himself.

Fionna and Cake scurried into Marshall's room and hid in his closet. The two females embraced each other with fear.

"He's gonna kill us," Cake squeaked in fright. "When he finds us here, he's gonna tie us up and suck out our blood like a spider."

"I know," Fionna said shakily. After a long sigh, she slowly devised a plan. "We'll wait for the right moment, then sneak out right under his nose."

"Okay, Cake," Cake whispered. "You can do this, girl. You can do this."

Marshall followed the odd smell up to his bedroom. He was having trouble figuring out where it was coming from, but it continued to bother him. After a slightly frustrated grunt, he floated into the bathroom.

Fionna and Cake had heard Marshall enter his room, and now they could hear him using the bathroom. They eased the closet door open and wormed out, trying to escape, but Fionna panicked when she heard Marshall finish quickly and rushed to shut the door. Marshall then wandered back into his room, still trying to decipher the smell.

"Ugh, boy didn't even wash his hands," Cake snarled.

"Who was that?" Marshall asked.

Fionna panicked and clamped her hand over Cake's mouth. Marshall had wandered closer to the closet, sniffing loudly. Fionna and Cake squeezed each other, almost positive they had been caught. Suddenly, the vampire followed his nose to his armpit, and they heard him say: "Wait a minute, that's me!"

Fionna and Cake relaxed, blowing out the air they had been nervously holding in.

"Where are those girls?" Marshall wondered aloud. He grabbed his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed their number, then waited a response. Eventually, the answering machine back at the treehouse picked up.

"_Hey y'all, I'm Fionna!" Cake chimed._

"_And I'm Cake!" Fionna followed._

"_And we…we're not home right now, so…" Cake tried to continue, but the twosome broke into hysterical laughter._

"_Leave a message!" they shouted in unison._

"Hey ladies," Marshall said into the phone. "Where are you? We're supposed to jam. If you can get to your phone, call me as soon as you can, 'kay?" And with that, he hung up.

Fionna got an idea. She slowly eased herself to a stand and began going through Marshall's coats. She found a piece of paper and a pencil and sat back down.

"What are you doing?" Cake asked curiously.

"Turn around, I have a plan," Fionna instructed.

Cake turned around, then Fionna proceeded to place the paper to her back and begin writing. Once she was finished, Cake turned back to face her. Fionna showed her the note, which said: _Help! Emergency! Come to the treehouse immediately!_

"When he sees this, he'll leave and we can get out of here," Fionna explained.

"Great, but how will this work?" Cake wondered.

"I'll throw it as an airplane toward the trashcan," Fionna explained. It will miss the trashcan, go downstairs into the kitchen, do a loop-de-loop to the fridge and cook some fish. It will carry the fish to a plate, fly back upstairs, then unfold on the carpet next to Marshall's bed."

"Girl, you're crazy," Cake whispered. "But it might be crazy enough to work."

"Let's hope so," Fionna said. She folded the paper into an airplane. She cracked open the door and flew it outside.

The airplane made its way downstairs into the living room, then glided into the kitchen. It looped once and opened the fridge, then swooped back around and scooped a fish off the shelf. The fish landed on a pan on the stove, then it glided down and turned on the stove. Once the fish cooked, the paper airplane scooped up the fish and flew it across the kitchen where it landed on a plate atop the table. Marshall's fluffy Persian white cat saw the fish and rushed over to nibble on it. The airplane left the kitchen and flew back upstairs, but it landed in the trashcan. When Fionna and Cake noticed, they both groaned with disappointment.

Marshall sighed as he lay across his bed. Eventually, he gave up and grabbed his bass. "Well, if those two won't show up, I guess I'll work on my personal stuff." He began strumming his bass at an e minor, creating a melancholy if not somewhat depressing tune. He reached over to his tape recorder and pressed record. "Dear Diary, this marks my five hundredth year of journal entries. This series of entries is so emotional and secret, that I can never let anyone hear it."

"Oh, we're in so much trouble," Cake mumbled.

Marshall continued to strum the depressing notes. "Not much has changed the last few centuries; I'm just the same depressed soul I always was for a thousand years. I don't really tell anyone about it, but…it's hard being my age for all eternity. My mom won't stop being a psycho; she's been this way ever since she ate my onion rings, and things have just gone downhill from there. Yeah, I should seek comfort from my friends…if I had any. I've been trapped, alone in this forsaken world longer than anyone else could imagine. In the Nightosphere, I swear everything was trying to kill me. Everyone wanted me gone. Possibly even my own mother. My mother…she doesn't even seem to know I exist, that I'm a living soul with feelings and stuff."

Fionna choked up, ready to cry. She had no idea that Marshall was so emotionally tormented. He always hid it so well around others. She wanted more than anything to burst out of the doors and squeeze the nightmares out of her friend.

"We've crossed the line, Fionna," Cake whispered, panicked. She began chipping away at the back wall, trying to create a hole. "I'm getting out of here now!"

"Hmm…" Fionna really wanted to hear more about Marshall, but at the same time she decided she probably couldn't take it. She knelt beside Cake and egged her on, eager to leave as soon as possible.

Cake managed to break a hole in the wall and shrank down to explore the cave she had created. Fionna turned back to Marshall and listened to his depressing speech with her bottom lip between her lip. But she turned around to notice Cake running back toward her and leaping out of the hole, growing back to normal size. Her tail was a gigantic puffball, and Fionna noticed a spider crawling out of the hole. The duo crawled up onto the coat rack in fear, then Cake stretched her arm down to push the spider out of the closet with a shoebox lid. The girls relaxed and returned to the floor, but were quickly frightened again when they peered out the closet door to notice the spider tipping over the lamp on Marshall's bedside table. Fionna and Cake shook their heads and covered their ears, but they still heard the crash.

"Whoa, hey!" Marshall barked, switching off the tape recorder. He saw the broken lamp and shouted: "Not cool, man!"

Fionna and Cake heard the vampire wandering back toward the closet and they rushed to hide in one of his jackets. Marshall threw open the door and yelled: "There you are!"

Fionna nearly fainted.

"I thought I'd find my broom in here," he said, grabbing the broom and dustpan from the back and walking out of the closet.

For possibly the fifth time that night, Fionna and Cake breathed a sigh of relief.

Marshall swept up the broken shards of his lamp with a disgruntled sigh, then wandered back into the closet to put the broom back. But black dust and soot splashed his face when he thrust it back against the wall, and he hissed with frustration. He quickly flew back to the bathroom, where he prepared himself a shower.

"Is it safe now?" Fionna wondered aloud.

"I don't know," Cake replied. "Go check things out."

Fionna slithered out of Marshall's coat and crawled slyly across the floor, then wandered into the bathroom to see if Marshall was distracted. However, she walked in at an incredibly awkward and poorly-timed moment, as Marshall had stripped off all of his clothes and was completely naked. Fionna's heart raced at the sight, and her face turned ten shades of red. Dizzy and traumatized for life, she scurried back to the closet and into the coat.

"Is it safe to leave?" Cake asked.

"Please don't make me go back out there," Fionna begged, shivering all over.

Cake immediately sensed something was wrong. "What did you see, girl?" Fionna said nothing and continued to shake, apparently hypnotized. "Fi? What's wrong? Are you okay, honey?"

Marshall finished his shower and floated back out wearing a grey undershirt and blue sweatpants. With a deep yawn, Marshall switched off the lights and floated over to his bed. He quickly fell asleep.

When the duo heard Marshall's snores, they eased the closet door open and snuck out. The spider from before lowered its web and landed on Fionna's face. Fionna became scared and swatted the spider off of her, but it landed on Cake's shoulder. Cake stared at it nervously, then it bit deeply into her flesh. Cake let out a silent scream, struggling to keep quiet, and crawled over to Fionna with tears in her eyes. They were almost home free, until Fionna spoke up.

"Is he awake?" she asked.

"Girl, this is no time for questions!" Cake protested.

"I need to know if Marshall's still asleep!" Fionna explained.

"Well, if he is awake, he can sure hear you talking!" Cake snarled.

"I'm whispering," Fionna said.

"No, we're both quietly screaming!" Cake objected.

"I can hear you both, you know," a deep voice bellowed in the darkness.

The girls panicked. "Cake, disguise mode!"

Marshall turned on the light and saw Fionna with a lampshade on her head, and Cake morphed to look like Fionna.

"What are you freaks doing in my room?" Marshall asked.

"Girl, I think he knows it's us," Cake whispered.

Fionna removed the lampshade and looked at Cake. "Dude! You disguised yourself as me?"

"Well, yeah!" Cake said, as if it were obvious.

Marshall cleared his throat. "A little explanation would be nice, if you don't mind."

Fionna sighed. "We were playing hide-and-seek in your house and you came home so we hid in your closet. We saw…" Fionna blushed madly at the memory she was trying to suppress. "…too much." Cake leapt into Fionna's arms and they both held each other for dear life. "Whatever you're about to do to us, we just wanted you to know that we're sorry."

"So sorry," Cake added.

"Guys, it's cool," Marshall said, suddenly nonchalant.

"Say what now?" Cake asked.

"I hide in your house all the time," Marshall admitted.

Fionna and Cake were speechless.

When Marshall led the duo out of his house, he called after them. "Well, anyway, no hard feelings, ladies! I'll catch up with you later!"

Fionna and Cake returned home and prepared for bed. Fionna wore her nightgown and was reading a book, but constantly glanced around nervously and self-consciously. Slowly, she drew the covers over herself until finally even her head was hidden from view. Cake groomed herself carefully, glancing from side to side with no knowledge of whether or not Marshall was watching her lick herself. Finally, she joined Fionna in the bedroom and called: "Hey, girl, could you…"

Fionna screamed, which caused Cake to start screaming. High up on the rooftop of the treehouse, Marshall was snickering to himself and listening to his friends' hilarious fear.


End file.
